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On the Montana Range, Efforts to Restore Bison Meet Resistance

Workers with the Interagency Bison Management Plan in 2010 herded bison that had wandered astray back within the confines of Yellowstone National Park.Credit
Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

HELENA, Mont. — Free-roaming wild bison, once vital to the history, culture and ecology of the high plains and then hunted nearly to oblivion, are back at the center of a new debate as they compete with cattle for space on Montana’s vast grasslands.

For the last 15 years, environmentalists and Indian tribes have worked to restore herds of American bison to portions of their former home here. But that effort has not gone over well with some in this state, which is now dominated by cattle that eat the rich grasses that the bison once consumed. This time around, the undeclared competition for rangeland is playing out in courts, the State Capitol and the news media.

New legislation to limit the bison’s numbers is under consideration in the State Legislature, stirring deep and old feelings. It is clear that wild bison, which once grazed freely by the millions before they were reduced to a handful in the 1800s, remain an emotional symbol.

“It was ‘wipe out the buffalo, starve the Indians and put them on reservations’ ” during the slaughter, said Mark Azure, director of the Fish and Wildlife Department at Fort Belknap, where members of the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre tribes reside. Both tribes once hunted bison on the high plains of Montana.

As the animals return, Mr. Azure said, some people here have renewed a traditional way of life, bringing back old ceremonies and stories. “It’s hard to describe, but seeing the animal outside, you feel things inside — a connection to our ancestors,” Mr. Azure said.

For now the only wild, free-ranging herds of bison in the region are in Yellowstone National Park. While there are many more bison in the state, they are owned, fenced in and considered livestock, not wildlife.

The goal of tribes, conservation groups and others is to restore wild herds using bison culled from the 4,000 or so animals in the Yellowstone herd, which are descendants of the handful who survived the 19th-century slaughter, and are considered genetically pure. Wild bison are a keystone species and graze in ways that create patches of habitat for other wild prairie species, like birds.

The debate over this restoration plan is heating up here as legislators who represent livestock-growing regions have tried to block the introduction of new herds with several bitterly contested bills.

One bill, introduced by State Senator John Brenden, a Republican and a leading opponent of wild herds, would allow landowners to shoot bison that wander onto their property, prevent the transfer of the animals anywhere in the state and create a new bison hunting season.

A bison at the gate to Yellowstone Park in Gardiner, Mont.Credit
James Woodcock/Billings Gazette, via Associated Press

Which is exactly the point, Senator Brenden said. “Why do you want to spread this creeping cancer, these woolly tanks, around the state of Montana?” he asked. “Trying to bring back the buffalo in big herds across Montana is like bringing back dinosaurs. And who wants dinosaurs in Montana? I certainly don’t.”

Montana tribes have made known their opposition to the bills. In mid-March, Indians from around the state held a pipe ceremony on a bison-hide robe in support of the restoration projects, filling the Capitol rotunda with drumming and singing.

Former Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat who fought for the transfer of bison to Indian reservation land, believes the battle comes down to a competition for grass. “These cattlemen make a great part of their living off subsidized grazing,” he said. While the federal government charges $1.38 to graze a cow and calf for a month, private landowners charge $22. “Buffalo are a large animal that could become active competition” for cheap grazing on federal land, Mr. Schweitzer said.

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What to do with Yellowstone bison that wander away from the park has long been a quandary. For many years hundreds of the massive animals have been killed by state officials and hunters, or hazed back into the park. Many people here, including Mr. Schweitzer, consider such treatment an outrage and have sought alternatives.

One solution was to repatriate wild bison to the plains. In 2010 Ted Turner received 83 Yellowstone bison on his Montana ranch, the first to be located outside of the park. Last year 61 bison were moved by the tribes to the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, with the help of environmental groups and federal and state agencies.

But as soon as the animals were moved, bison opponents went to court and received an injunction to prevent further transfers. The injunction has been appealed to the Montana Supreme Court by environmental groups and will be heard next month. If it is lifted, bison will be loaded on trucks and start rolling out of Yellowstone to new homes around the state. The wild bison in the park are quarantined, tested and certified free of disease before they are moved.

Nonetheless, some ranchers say they are concerned about brucellosis, an infectious bacteria-borne disease carried by some of the Yellowstone bison that some fear could infect cattle.

Trampled fences are another concern. “When bison are hungry they move,” said Representative Kerry White, a Republican who is a partner in a family ranch. “Free-roaming bison will walk right through a fence,” he said, and when they leave the reservation, there is often no one to round them up.

Nonetheless, a restoration is taking place in one vast area, and it has been controversial with some ranchers, even though the acreage has been purchased or leased. The American Prairie Reserve in northern Montana has 250 bison on some 273,000 deeded and leased acres.

The reserve is contiguous to the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife refuge, which is about a million acres. The goal of some conservation groups is some three million acres with a large roaming herd of bison filling their ancient ecological role on the prairie.

“The effort is to restore wild bison to the grassland on a landscape level,” said Tom France, a wildlife advocate with the National Wildlife Federation, who opposes the Montana legislation because it would make their efforts more difficult. “And it will give us a sense of what once was.”

A version of this article appears in print on April 2, 2013, on Page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: On the Montana Range, Efforts to Restore Bison Meet Resistance. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe